


Primary

by SLWalker



Series: Taking Flight [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (Puberty wins but not easily), Cuddling, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Maul v. the end of puberty, Pre-Slash, Sexuality, Wingfic, molting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 19:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11880807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: Maul faces off against puberty, learns that ice cream is definitely a good weapon against it, loses horns, loses feathers and starts to really process some of the awful things that came before this.





	Primary

**Author's Note:**

> It meanders some, but with purpose.

When he woke up missing two horns, two very large feathers, a handful of smaller ones and feeling ravenous, Maul-- still had no idea what was happening.

He hadn't been feeling right for days; getting up and moving was even harder than usual, and even though he had never been what anyone would consider talkitive, he had to work to even answer in the affirmative or negative when asked questions. Unsurprisingly, the healers took notice, but after giving him a check-up -- something he got so often since being here that it had become part of his routine -- they didn't seem alarmed. They just updated his nutrition orders from the cafeteria, suggested drinking plenty of water and meditation.

The Jedi were always recommending meditation. Maul struggled with it like he had not in years, not because he didn't enjoy it before, but because he still hadn't quite figured out how to sit on a floor with wings, and laying on the floor inevitably resulted in him falling asleep. Katas were as close as he could get; in those, at least, he was able to get lost in the flow of the Force and let his mind settle.

This was definitely not something that meditation was going to fix.

He sat with the two long feathers in his lap, the two shed horns on his nightstand. It was not the first time he'd shed the horns; every couple of years as he grew, he did that. That was not as alarming as missing feathers at the same time.

 _Primaries,_ they were called. They were the only feathers he had which had color; the vein that ran down the center and the outside part was as black as his other feathers, but the inside part, the knife-edge of them was vivid red, as bright as his skin was in the light. He caught himself stroking them as they lay in his lap, trying to fix the splits and ragged parts even though it didn't matter.

That might have also been because he was nervous. His voice had gone funny on him of late, as well. Sometimes he seemed to lose it altogether. Sometimes it just broke.

He didn't want to go back to the healers, not really. His stomach rumbled; Maul's relationship with hunger wasn't terribly good, given his long periods of it and ability to ignore it, but right now he couldn't ignore this if he wanted to. He palmed down his face, then rolled his shoulders, feathers rustling.

Maybe Obi-Wan's healer friend could help.

 

 

 

"I'm-- pretty sure you're just in a growing phase," Bant said, looking at the two spots on his head where his two horns had been -- opposite of one another, towards the back -- and then at the two spots on his wings where big feathers had once been. "Molting." A beat. "And-- shedding."

"Isn't there some way to stop this?" Maul asked, and then resolved not to say anything again for the rest of the day because of the way his voice just cracked.

He wasn't by any means _vain_ , but he also wasn't a fan of humiliation, either.

Bant shook her head slowly, back and forth, wide silvery eyes gazing at him with that compassion that seemed to come so naturally to Jedi inclined in the healing arts. "No, not really. I'm afraid you'll just have to survive it like everyone else." When the fine feathers bristled on his wings, she frowned and amended, "I don't mean offense, I just mean-- how do you feel about ice sweets?"

Maul instantly broke his own vow not to speak, squinting and asking, _"What?"_

 

 

 

The Room of a Thousand Fountains was soothing and the-- ice cream, in his case, was surprisingly good.

Maul grudgingly had to admit that Bant Eerin had excellent tastes, at least so far as suggestions on where to sit and what to eat went. He had not yet formed an opinion on her idea of _entertainment_ , which seemed to consist of scantily clad males of various species and overly synthesized music, though he did appreciate that her collection was entirely contraband. But in terms of this... this was a good idea.

Her version of confection was nothing at all like his; hers was green and smelled of the sea, much as she did, and his was off-white and had some sort of berry in it. It was almost _too_ sweet, but for some reason, that didn't bother Maul in the slightest right now.

"Calcium," Bant explained. "You need a lot of that. And other trace minerals."

Maul just nodded, back to trying not to speak as much as possible. His two lost feathers sat next to him; for as long and flashy as they were, they were incredibly light, and the breeze which blew through the room stirred them occasionally. He wondered if he was going to keep losing them like he lost horns; the realization of  _how many_ feathers he had to lose, in that case, was-- daunting. He had nine of those dual-colored primaries on each wing, then many long secondaries. And that wasn't touching on the-- coverts, of which there were several kinds.

He was a little disappointed when the ice cream was gone, but as a thank you, he gave Bant one of those two feathers, given how she had been admiring them.

Maul tried not to be too unnerved by how touched she was by the gesture.

 

 

 

"The world's largest quill," Obi-Wan said, examining the other long feather he had with him, miming writing with it and grinning in mischief. "Or duster. Or perhaps--"

Maul took it back off of him with a growl, which of course broke, and then he stalked off to go lay down again.

 

 

 

It wasn't that he hadn't been educated in basic biology. It was that experiencing it was very different from reading about it. He remembered intermittent periods where he had grown taller seemingly overnight, and other periods where he started _noticing_  things differently. But so much of his life had been about survival and training that aside having to adjust how he moved and worked out, he hadn't allowed himself much time to consider it.

It seemed like all of it now decided to happen at once. Not just the growing, but the _noticing_.

Two weeks after he woke up missing horns and feathers, new horns were growing in fairly fast, as were the new primaries. He could feel the itch that suggested he was about to lose two _more_  horns and two _more_  primaries, and his voice was still incredibly unpredictable, but he was managing it well enough. Hiding in the Room of a Thousand Fountains became a daily affair. The cafeteria saw him coming and handed over a basket of food, which he had a frighteningly easy time finishing, but there wasn't any fat on him.

Then there was that braid.

Not his, obviously. _Obi-Wan's._

That had started innocently enough; he had been sitting (on his custom furniture) in their shared quarters reading -- he had no formal classes, as yet, but Master Jinn insisted that he still study and learn -- and Obi-Wan had leaned over him to see what he was reading.

Never in his life, to that point, had Maul noticed _hair_  like that before. That braid slid across and then around his neck and shoulder and Maul instantly forgot what he was reading. He must have given some indication as to his instant awareness, because Obi-Wan apologized and stood back up straight, and that should have been that, but it _wasn't_.

He started watching that braid like he would a venomous snake... which was when he started noticing the way it would lay against Obi-Wan's shoulder. After he noticed that, he noticed the line of Obi-Wan's neck, from under his ear on down, and that was right about when Maul realized-- _oh._

What few times he had experimented with sexuality had been at Orsis, with the memory of Kilindi's smooth skin as it brushed against his own as they sparred, or the sight of her stripped down and swimming, moving through the water with such grace that it stole his breath; he had also known fairly instantly that his Master would find such distraction from his purpose abhorrent, and did everything he possibly could to ignore it, though not always to perfect success.

After Orsis--

When that realization came crashing in on him, for the first time the actual _understanding_ of what it was he had done, the look on her face, the--

He locked himself in the 'fresher and sat in the shower, heedless of wings or anything else, biting his own forearm hard enough to make it bleed trying to muffle his sobbing, hoping even in the midst of it that the sound of water would protect him from being discovered in such a moment of pathetic weakness.

 

 

 

It was Master Jinn who took him out of there hours later; by then, he was so exhausted and lost that he didn't put up a fight when he was toweled off and wrapped in a giant blanket and put to bed like a child he had never been.

"You'll be all right," the man said, both quiet certainty and quiet compassion. "You're safe here."

Maybe he was, but Kilindi was still gone, and that was still his fault.

 

 

 

The second, third and fourth sets of horns and feathers passed by mostly unnoticed. So did food, so did that braid, so did everything. His life consisted of a routine which he struggled to get through and the heavy ache in his chest. He forgot whatever he was supposed to be learning almost the instant after he set the datapad down, and it usually took commands to get him to move again -- from the healers, from Jinn -- though they were on the whole quite gentle.

He barely had mind to scratch the soft, thin skin off of the new horns that grew in, smooth and sharp and so unlike his previous sets; didn't have mind to wonder why this set was so much cleaner and better formed than any he'd had before. He was careful with the new primaries until they were done, but only because broken blood feathers would upset everyone.

He woke up sometimes with his face stuffed in his pillow, right back to that wretched sobbing, curled around it and hiding under the shelter of a wing.

It didn't break quickly, either.

Through it all, Obi-Wan was there; sometimes wide-eyed worry, sometimes a steady and patient presence. The first time Maul felt-- present, not broken, was sitting over a datapad he was struggling to read and the awareness filtering in of the padawan stroking the feathers between his shoulders, a steady and soothing touch, half-massage against the joints of his wings, half just comfort.

He didn't know how to feel, but at least he felt something other than grief. Shades of gratitude, shades of unworthiness.

He was there enough to eat without being told when he lost his temple horns; when he lost two more primaries, towards the outsides. Not the longest ones he had yet, but among the more elegantly shaped of them. He hadn't noticed what happened to the others at the time, but he was oddly touched when Obi-Wan showed him where they had been carefully laid out in cloth, wrapped up under his bed.

He didn't really know what to do with them; they were ragged and beaten, the feathers he had started with, but he also didn't feel ready to throw them out yet, either.

Each day became a little easier to cope with; the grief remained and sometimes came back so hard that he was knocked breathless by it, but as he learned to manage it, he learned how to better handle it when that happened.

One night, he woke up in tears to find Obi-Wan right there. Such a sight so close might have startled him more, if not for how accustomed he had grown to the padawan's presence; the blue-fire signature in the Force, the sound of his voice, the way he moved.

"Budge over?" Obi-Wan whispered, and after a moment, Maul did.

Obi-Wan climbed into the bed with him, and somehow, through a series of careful movements and coordinating limbs, he ended up with his head in the hollow of Obi-Wan's shoulder.

He had never been held like that before -- the horns precluded it -- but until those temple horns came back in, that wasn't an issue. Maul didn't know how to feel about it, but it ached, not quite the ache of grief. Something else, which he didn't have a word for yet; whatever it was, he twined his fingers in Obi-Wan's sleep shirt and failed to stop the fresh tears which followed.

The next morning, Obi-Wan blew off the knick he had gotten from one of the crown horns.

That same afternoon, Maul asked the healers to dull the tips of all of them.


End file.
